FULL TITLE: More than 100 children rescued from clutches of pedophiles in ground-breaking raid across 19 states that saw 245 arrested

More than 100 children have been rescued from the clutches of pedophiles after a massive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raid.

The ground-breaking investigation - named 'Operation Sunflower' - was executed America-wide between November 2012 and the first week of December, and resulted in 245 arrests.

A total of 123 sexually exploited children were identified by ICE agents working with Homeland Security Investigations by targeting people who own, trade and produce child pornography.

Of those, 44 victims were rescued from their abusers and another 55 were saved from being exploited by people they knew outside the home. Another 24 victims were identified as adults who were preyed on as children.

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'The sexual abuse of young children, often at the hands of people they trust, is a particular wrong,' said ICE Director John Morton.

'Whenever our investigations reveal the production and distribution of new child pornography online, we will do everything we can to rescue the victim and prosecute the abuser even if it takes us years or around the world to do it. A relentless fight against child exploitation is the only answer.'

I'm not in any way doubting that child pornography exists, that it is perverse and disgusting and infinitely harmful to the children involved, nor that it should be dealt with by public hanging.

However, it makes me sad that the government, of late, has lied enough times that when something like this comes out, part of me wonders: is it true? I mean, after all, what better way to demonize someone and have the public spitting on them and throwing vegetables on their way to the gallows than to accuse them of this?

I'm not questioning this story, per se, just saying how sad it is that the government lies enough that I even have to entertain that nagging question.

Think about it: what if you refused to turn in your firearms and Homeland Security raided your home and conveniently "found" child pornography? What better way to ensure nobody would question anything that happened to you after that point?

Anyway, yeah, if true, hang 'em high. I guess I'm just being tin foily. Tyranny has that effect on me.

First, let me be crystal clear: I think we should bring back drawing and quartering for such scum.

That said, my question is about jurisdiction. Why on earth are ICE (supposedly tasked with keeping our borders safe, apprehending illegal aliens, etc.....immigration enforcement) and Homeland Security (supposedly tasked with protecting us from terrorism on our soil) involved in busting child porn rings? Interpol, the FBI, state police....I could rattle off a few dozen LE entities that SHOULD be doing this vs. these two organizations.

Call me paranoid....but those who applaud these agencies in this case are not thinking. Where do we draw the lines on their authority and jurisdictions in this country? I don’t like it.

Maybe it's the steady stream of stories with wild inaccuracies that some from the MSM, but the lack of actual details (other than numbers) is raising a red flag for me here.

How is one "rescued" from someone who is outside the home? How exactly were they "rescued" from their abusers inside the home? Why are there no details on the perpetrators? On the nature of the abuse?

Sorry, I know everyone loves the orgy of hate we get to direct at the bad guys in all these stories... but this one feels like some department had to justify their budget, and thus had a friendly reporter print a fake-but-accurate PR piece. If the 123 victims and 245 perps were all taken in one sting, there must be SOME common details that led the authorities to do this as one big sweep. The gaping hole in the story makes me suspicious.

(What if we read next year that all of the arrestees were conservatives, and no actual abuse occurred? This is EXACTLY how power abusers would go about ruining massive numbers of their opponents.)

/ paranoid conspiracy theories>

11
posted on 01/04/2013 11:28:50 AM PST
by Teacher317
('Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.)

A lot of them were probably Asian and ME immigrants. The Chinese are particularly bad at this and a lot of the ICE raids in NYC (and other big cities) were on houses where the Chinese kept young girls locked up for their “special clients.” African immigrants have also been heavily involved in this.

Latin Americans are sometimes classed as pedophiles because the age of consent in many LatAm countries is very low (14 or 15), simply because this was the tradition worldwide until about the end of the 19th century, and in fact there were US states that had that age until only a few decades ago (look up Jerry Lee Lewis). There are problems in Mexico with gang-run prostitution, but it still seems to be not very extended here.

If ICE raided places, these were clearly houses of prostitution run by immigrants, and the big players in underage prostitution are the Chinese, followed by Caribbean black gangs and Middle Easterners (who often buy a non-ME, usually minority [often filipina] juvenile to use as a slave, including sex for the master).

An article this morning in the Guardian by feature writer Jon Henley addresses misconceptions about pedophiles, quoting one “expert” who believes that: “It is the quality of the relationship that matters”.

And the significant majority of them are in muslim countries... There are currently 27,000,000 (plus or minus) people in slavery around the world, many of those in sexual slavery. At no point in history have there ever been more.

18
posted on 01/04/2013 12:17:44 PM PST
by 2banana
(My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)

The story asserted that the investigation arose from seized child pornography. You are stating that the evidence of pictures isn’t enough or doesn’t count if you don’t get to see the pictures of kids getting screwed by adults?

The press should get ahold of those and satisfy you?

Really?

You aren’t “Paranoid”.

You are “Perverted”.

20
posted on 01/04/2013 12:22:04 PM PST
by MrEdd
(Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)

They never tell you the details. Is it a Caribbean or Mexican gang stable, is it a room full of drugged Chinese teenagers being rented over a Chinese restaurant (which we had here in Florida) or is it commercial infant porn produced by Germans using children captured in the US?

If it was an ICE raid, I’d say it was a big commercial foreign operation. But as you say, that could be anything.

Both of you have based your responses on the fact that slavery is legal in some Muslim countries. When did I suggest that the slavery of 27,000,000 was all legal slavery?

Sexual slavery and human trafficking is a worldwide problem. It's not legal in the Philippines, or India, or Los Angeles, or China, or Cambodia, or Eastern Europe. Brick-making slavery isn't legal in India.

The boy soldiers of African are forced to serve. Do we count that as legal slavery?

We have caste slavery in India and Nepal, and slave migrant workers in Indonesia.

Slavery exists in some form in every country.

33
posted on 01/04/2013 12:55:07 PM PST
by Scoutmaster
(You knew the job was dangerous when you took it)

Since ICE led the investigation, may we presume that all or most of these child rapists are illegal Latino immigrants, brought here to vote for Obama?

NO....because in doing so you're giving a pass to the domestic, homegrown American perverts who are the primary recipients of this horrible trash.......

Among those arrested were 51-year-old Gerald Roberts, of Pageland, S.C., who is accused of producing child pornography using a 6-year-old girl. Roberts, who has pleaded not guilty, was arrested Nov. 8 and is facing federal charges. His attorney, Michael Allen Meetze, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Michael Wioskowski, 54, of Eastpointe, Mich., was arrested Nov. 27 on charges of possession and receipt of child pornography. Investigators found a video in his home of two underage girls showering at his house when they served a warrant at his home. Wioskowski was a court security officer and formerly a reserve police officer in Michigan.

Wioskowski has not entered a plea, according to court records. His attorney, Robert S. Harrison, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Fresno, Calif., 26-year-old Bradley Vaine, a convicted sex offender, was arrested Nov. 6 on federal charges of distribution and possession of child pornography. ICE said a 7-year-old mentally disabled girl was rescued. According to court records, Vaine was in federal custody and has not entered a plea. His attorney, Victor Chavez, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Have you been to a Muslim country? Their doors need a key to enter and leave. They lock the maids in when they leave for the day. They treat their hired help like slaves.

They had an incident in Central Florida a few months ago where a couple of Arabs (muslims) had an African woman locked away in their house, theye were not feeding heer etc and she was finally able to escape, the poor woman did not speak English.

For example, I have two daughters who wear makeup that has a sparkly effect to it. Thousand of Indian children are forced to dig mica daily to be used as a component in that makeup.

I have a lot of sporting and camping equipment, so I'm supporting forced labor in China. Some of my cotton clothing probably originated with forced child labor in Uzbek cotton fields.

On the continent of Africa, - I use electronics, including a smart phone, so I probably use Coltan (Columbite-tantalite) in those. Coltan is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by workers forced to work by armed guards.

As I said before, global trade is one of the factors behind the number of people in slavery today.

42
posted on 01/04/2013 1:23:11 PM PST
by Scoutmaster
(You knew the job was dangerous when you took it)

No, that’s very true. I have a family member who worked in this field, and they even arrested an Assistant DA for child porn trafficking. But if ICE was involved, probably the people were not native born.

That is one of the greatest sources of anguish I have as a free market capitalist, global markets. I despise them, but have to accept them as part of the model. Think of the countries that hate us that would be in the stone ages if not for global economy, as long as we don’t give away our technology as we have done over the last 50 years or so through student and work visa and a chicom president in the WH.

Think about it: what if you refused to turn in your firearms and Homeland Security raided your home and conveniently “found” child pornography? What better way to ensure nobody would question anything that happened to you after that point?

***
I was thinking along similar lines recently. They could railroad someone just for criticizing the government. With the technology available today, I am betting that they could remotely download child porn to your hard drive. The LEOs who discovered it could be completely in the dark about its origin.

Like you, I am not questioning this particular case, but I am entertaining the possibility of such set-ups, especially for people who have gone to the WH website to sign one of the many “petitions” we have heard so much about lately. Scary times we live in.

Well, that just raises another issue. There’s nothing wrong with arresting a bunch of pederasts—but that isn’t ICE’s job. Why were they putting in time doing this, when it should have been the police or the FBI?

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